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ThreeAuthor: Ann Quin British Literature Series April 2001 143 pages, 5.5 x 8 Paperback, 1-56478-272-7 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $9.56 
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Book Description
Three opens with the death of a young woman, identified only as S, possibly a suicide. Following her death, Ruth and Leonard—a middle-aged British couple whose marriage has devolved into pithy and bitter conversations—review the time S spent at their summer house.
In a lyrical prose style likened to that of such diverse writers as Virginia Woolf and William Burroughs, Ann Quin presents the enigmatic intricacies of the relationship between these three people by blending the conversations and flashbacks of Ruth and Leonard with the diary, audiotapes and movies S left behind.
A combination of laconic dialogue and poetic impressions, Three is an incisive exploration of the emotional and sexual undercurrents of British middle-class life.
About the Author
| Ann Quin, one of the best kept secrets of British experimental writing, has garnered comparisons to such diverse writers as Samuel Beckett and Nathalie Sarraute. Before her death in 1973, she published four novels, including Berg and Passages. In 1964 she became the first female recipient of the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship which allowed her to travel to the U.S., a trip that provided the basis for Tripticks. |
Praise
"Magic and startlingly humorous . . . written with the energy and skill of an inspired alchemist."—Robert Sward, Poetry Magazine"Quin has this talent for throwing off ripples of association . . . her best quality, her subconscious quality."—Alan Burns
"Exquisitely written from the first page to the last. If you don't read it then you're not interested in the present and possible future of the English novel."—Scotsman
"A continuously interesting, beautifully written, rather venturesome novel of a literary artist who knows her way around both the modern novel and modern poetry."—Choice
"Miss Quin prefers the symbol to the direct statement; small happenings give way to fantasies, many of them erotic . . . She is quite expert, and the household atmosphere, one of reproachful, edgy, nasty irritability is just as unpleasant as it is intended to be."—Kirkus
"Three has been made rather than begotten, and it is forever flirting with an elegant and obscure symbolism."—Times Literary Supplement
"Ann Quin works over a small area with the finest of tools . . . Every page, every word gives evidence of her care and workmanship."—New York Times
"The story accumulates via a counterpointing of images, a perpetual shuttling between elements . . . a skillful book."—Spectator